When a baby is on ECMO, or in the NICU at all, there are a LOT of numbers that can be alarming or heartening. Heart rates, blood pressures, oxygen saturations, potassium levels, lactate levels, blood volumes, urine outputs, etc, etc, etc. In addition, they do a daily brain ultrasound and occasional chest X-rays, heart scans, and more. To be as healthy (emotionally) as possible, it's best to ignore the details and leave them to the doctors, but it's occasionally difficult not to get your hopes up, or get disappointed, based on various results. And when we're not on-site, we call several times a day to get updates on Andrew's condition.
The numbers we are most interested in seeing are those that mean he's being weaned off the ECMO machine. They measure the oxygen saturation going into his body, and the same value coming out. The higher the second number, the less Andrew needs the oxygen from the machine, and the more he's producing himself. When that number looks good, then the nurses can lower the flow of blood from the ECMO. When he first went on, the flow number was 36....and the lower the better. During this day, his flow went down to 32 for a while, and even dropped to 30 for a bit. Very encouraging, even though the change was a small percentage of the total.
In the morning, D and I visited....in the afternoon, D's mom and I went in. They were able to remove an IV from his foot, so his lower half looks a lot better....there won't be any upper-half tubes removed for a while.
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